Flash

LOVE RUNS AWAY TO JOIN THE CIRCUS by Kieron Walquist

September 4, 2019

The Ringleader lets the circus run itself into the ground, unsupervised. Ever since the accident, he hides himself in his trailer. Away from the police, the press, the public. All who lie in wait outside, hunched and hungry. Ready to ambush. Ready to accuse: how could you let this happen? Confined by choice, the ringleader doesn’t eat much. Drinks religiously. Sleeps. Occasionally peeks behind the dusty blinds at the sun. You stay with him in his misery. Longing to be loved. But he refuses to want you. Says: you don’t belong in the circus! Go home. You tell him the back door is unlocked. That anyone could break into such sadness.

***

The Acrobat makes the dance look effortless. Without the weight of wings, she flies. Streaks the skyline of the tallest circus tent. Bound in a blood-red ribbon of silk, she unravels. Becomes undone. Tumbles towards you. The cops, the cameras, the citizens. Down below, everyone evacuates. Clearing a patch of hard-packed earth for her. There’s no safety net. Suddenly, she stops. Hangs herself by an ankle. Unharmed, the acrobat spreads her arms. TA-DAH! But the onlookers leave, having seen it all before. You promise that she was enough. That your love is enough. She swears it isn’t. Sighs. She really felt it this time. Fame. You tell her they wanted a fall. One more circus catastrophe.

***

The Beast Tamer feeds the menagerie of animals raw, red meat. Refills the empty stock tanks with cool, crisp water. Scrubs the dust and dirt off the elephants. Tousles the winter coat of the black bear. Playing nice, the beast tamer puts on a show for the authorities, the anchormen, the audience. But you know better. Before the accident, his animals were often sedated and starved. Never let loose. You want to be abused. To have that harsh, heavy kind of love. He says you’re feral. Too wild to hold down. You counter that his crime is obvious. That others will see the suffering safari and wonder: where did the meat come from?

***

The Fire Eater buries the evidence deep inside a burn barrel. With blistered and blackened hands, he rains gasoline over the remains. Strikes a match. Ignites a fountain of fire. Inhales the smoke. Singed by the hush of heat, he walks away from the blaze. Burning up. Bejeweled in beads of sweat. You follow. Feverish from head to toe. You vow to keep it all a secret. You won’t tell a soul. Not the rangers, the reporters, the residents—no one. He thanks you, but rejects the thought of romance. With you, it’s just too cold. You ask, if he eats fire, when did he become so scared?

***

The Magician replays and rehearses the old routine. He shuffles the cards, carefully picks the one unknown. Stuffs a rabbit into a top hat. Makes it vanish, then reappear. He saws the pretty girl in-half, but she always comes back together. Every trick he has up his sleeve works. He makes no mistakes. Nothing goes wrong. Yet, something did go wrong. Just once. And they want an explanation. The law, the live broadcast, the locals. You come to his defense. A good magician never reveals his secrets. That’s what you love about him. He begs you to leave. You’re only making it worse. You have no trouble disappearing on your own.

***

The Fortuneteller meets with the ringleader. The acrobat. The beast tamer. The fire eater. The magician. Welcomes them into her sanctuary. A small space—a room crowded by candles. Air thick with the scent of incense. Roses. Beeswax. Something dead. With milk-white eyes, she considers her crystal ball. Translates her Tarot cards. Looks over the lines pressed into palms. She forewarns them of a frightening future. This time, they believe it—before, they had laughed. You believe the fortuneteller. Offer your hand. Ask: is there love between us? She looks. Shakes her head. I see no future with you.

***

You were the brave volunteer. Out of hundreds of outstretched hands, they reached for yours. Chosen, you were carried from the crowd. Brought up on the stage. Held still by the ringleader, the acrobat, the beast tamer, the fire eater, the magician. Electric, the circus performers declared dangerous acts. The swell of sound from the audience—cheers and cries—left you feeling frozen. But you couldn’t have backed out. Not in front of the high-wire. The black bear. The flamethrower. The water-filled tank. You had to play the part. And you did. But before you died in the accident, you looked back at the performers. Thought they all felt it. Love.

A CHILDHOOD IN FIVE ACTS by Suzanne Craig-Whytock

September 3, 2019

Out back behind the house, there was a rusty old oil drum that Da used late at night for burning stuff. Once Sammy and I found what looked like some kind of animal bones in it, but we didn’t dare ask about the kitten that Sammy had found the week before. This is how I grew up.

I couldn’t help Sammy, I couldn’t save him because he would always cry, even when I whispered, “Don’t cry, don’t.” He couldn’t stop his eyes from leaking like a broken tap, that’s what Da would call him, “Ya fucking little broken tap,” and Sammy would squeeze his eyes together tight, but the more Da yelled at him, the more he cried, and there was nothing I could do about what happened next. This is how I grew up.

I never talked at school, and my clothes and fingernails were dirty. Ms. Carmody would ask, “What’s wrong, Delilah?” but I couldn’t answer because deep inside I liked her, and I couldn’t stand to see her eyes change when she looked at me, like I was a little broken tap too. This is how I grew up.

Once, I got caught in a tree, and Da looked out the back window and saw me hanging there, choking. He ran out and saved me, and then he took off his belt and hit me with the folded leather over and over and over again, yelling, “Stupid bitch, you coulda died,” until I wished I had. But I didn’t cry, I wasn’t like Sammy. This is how I grew up.

Da was Hephaestus, forging us and pounding our wings until we couldn’t fly and we couldn’t remember ever having feathers. Sammy evaporated in the quench, but I got folded into myself and hammered flat over and over and over again until I was hard as Damascus and double-edged and no longer myself. This is how I grew up.

JUDITH, MOTHER by Matthew Lovitt

August 11, 2019

Judith didn’t want to force the boy, but Jacob refused the chance to be reborn in His image. Willow, the regression therapist, said he suffered a PTSD-like disease, and that simulating a second birth would release him from the trauma of years of processed food, daycare by television. And so she held tight the down blanket wrapped around his body, the mock vaginal lips that parted at the crown of his head. He kicked and screamed, and she whispered that soon they would be together again.

Willow said, Again?

And Judith imagined what it would be like to cut the crusts off of her boy’s sandwiches, chauffeur him to cotillion, and buy him his first semi-automatic weapon—everything that she didn’t get to do for her first Gift. Because God bestowed upon the faithful riches—Judith was a vessel for Him. Perfect posture, tiny steps, shirtsleeves past the wrists.

The boy vomited in his womb, and the therapist considered Judith’s many mounted animal heads—antelope, deer, and ram.

What would you call this room? Willow said.

An office, I guess.

And how many rooms do you have?

Twelve if you count the workshop out back.

Willow whistled a cartoon whistle, as if she was impressed. Judith sensed a twinge of contempt. But the therapist didn’t know how dearly she paid—a dead husband and organs.

Judith forced a smile. I’ve been blessed.

Willow said, It would be better for him to birth into your arms, so that you can wipe away the afterbirth from his eyes, nose, and lips.

But his mess, Judith said.

The first of many, I’m afraid.

She grimaced.

And to have him otherwise could make him upset.

Well I’d rather not.

Who would?

Ruin this blouse, I meant.

In his down womb, Jacob writhed, gagged, and spit.

Judith held the mock-opening against her chest.

Willow reached for the boy.

She yanked him away, shot the therapist a look like you’re next.

He could die, Willow said.

Every life comes with certain risks.

And then Judith hummed a lullaby until Jacob’s life passed through her—water through a sieve. The remnants: tiny deposits of sin. But now the boy was free to enter heaven. Or burn in hell, as God wished. And then Judith lay the boy’s body on the ground, rocked forward to a crouch, and lunged at Willow, pummeled her face and chest. She was surprised by how little blood stained her fists. When the bitch was good and dead, Judith looked over her shoulder to Jacob, and noticed the body fluids seeping through the comforter, blotting the carpet yellow and red.

She muttered, Shit.

Judith dragged Jacob by the feet, to the metal shed out back, and into the storage closet where he and Willow could be stashed. The following day she would dump them in a wastewater pit one county west. The chemical sludge would eat away their skin or at least the fingerprints that might tie her to them. But first, but now, she needed to ask for His forgiveness, receive His wisdom.

Judith sat in the last pew of Calvary Assembly. A gaggle of accordion-shaped matrons gathered near the front of the hall, around Joseph, the preacher, preaching The End. Their task was to hold one another witness to be saved from sin. And it was through such service they might glimpse heaven. Then Joseph said he had to take to the shop his Benz, but there was time if anyone would like to testify their faith to Him. Two women shot to their feet, gave one another a sideways glance.

Judith laughed, lifted her gaze to the heavens, and prayed: God, thank you for saving me. It’s been a long journey, and I’m trying my best, but sometimes I’m not sure if I’m cut out to be in Your service. I know the two followers I delivered to you today were unclean—that woman smelled like cigarettes and likely the boy couldn’t complete a quick slant. For this I ask your forgiveness, and another chance. Please give me a sign: a healthy prospect or a new, functional uterus. Sure every setback is an opportunity, but I’m at the end of my wits.

Judith parked her Escalade two blocks from the elementary. She waited for the last girl to lope down the schools front steps, toward her car, then held out the window a rope of saltwater taffy.

She said, Hungry?

The girl grimaced. Not for your garbage candy.

Judith gasped.

And why are you so creepy?

My word.

Against mine.

I don’t know what you mean, Judith said.

The girl plucked her cellphone from her pocket. Well maybe we should call the police, and see what happens then.

SLEEPY TIGER by Matthew Bookin

August 9, 2019

Paul started doing deliveries. He was 19 days sober. The passenger side of his car still looked like a carefully crushed soda can. The travel bottle of Listerine was still in his glove box.

Emir’s food truck business had expanded into an actual restaurant. Paul was hired on as their 31-year-old delivery boy. He picked up racks of steamed dumplings from the restaurant and loaded them into the back of his nearly defeated red car. It was early summer and sometimes, mostly on the weekends, he could be out making deliveries until dawn. He felt quiet and newly alive. He was experiencing traffic lights in an honest, gentle way. People smiled at him and tipped with paper money. A woman handed him an apple with a lipstick-lined bite taken from its side. Fire hydrants bled happily into the streets. Strangers seemed mysterious, hungry, and kind. Light rain washed the city dust from his windshield when he couldn’t afford a new jug of electric blue washer fluid.

The sobriety app he’d downloaded offered up an inspirational quote every day. “Be in love with your life. Every minute,” Jack Kerouac told Paul from some place in the past. Paul knew that Jack Kerouac drank himself to death while living in his mother’s guest room. Paul flipped his phone facedown in the passenger seat of his car and imagined a long stem rose floating dumbly in a full bottle of non-alcoholic beer.

When he was wasted, every day was a casino. Now that he was sober, every day was a boardwalk at dawn.

Paul felt good in a fragile way, like an old light bulb that would pop and burn out at any moment. He could barely make eye contact with anyone. He carried mammoth stacks of dumpling trays up marathon flights of apartment complex stairs. He fed lonely people and he fed families. Some doors opened and he’d find himself facing a mirror. He never tried the food.

The feeling he had when he stopped moving was deep and kaleidoscopic. It swirled and absorbed him. It dryly intoxicated. His psychedelic sadness posed no mysteries. It was his belt, looped tightly to the doorknob of the closet. It was circles inside of boxes. Cages and codes. Heart attacks and cracked pitchers of spiked lemonade. Bad vibes he paid for. No giving, just getting. The fifth can of a six-pack. A vast field of patiently unlit green candles arranged like guillotined sunflowers. The “blah blah blah” of his broken heart.

The restaurant closed quickly and sadly. Emir was widely accused of gentrifying the neighborhood, so he shuttered the place and vanished from the city. For a few weeks, every evening after the delivery job died, Paul would buy several cartons of dumplings from a Chinese takeout place next to his Stepmom’s apartment, where he’d been staying. He’d drive around all night long with the unfamiliar dumplings in his backseat, not really going anywhere. His car would smell like scallions forevermore and the wind was getting colder. When the mornings rolled around he’d donate the untouched food to a shelter downtown.

At his very best, he felt like the only man working behind the scenes at a fireworks display.

Six months later, at the conclusion of a particularly cruel day, Paul bought a tall can of Budweiser beer from a gas station lacking a front door. That was pretty much the end of him.

AS SEEN ON TV by Kyra Kondis

August 8, 2019

Bedazzler

It’s your idea to go as KISS for your first real Halloween party in your freshman year of high school, and of course nobody warns you that your three friends will back out of the costume at the last second. You won’t get their text until your mother drops you off a block away from the party’s actual location. A few weeks before, you’d begged her for the $19.95 you needed to punch plastic rhinestones up and down the legs of too-small black jeans; you have to wear these jeans. It starts to drizzle before you get to the door of the house—everything is always at some rich kid’s stone-sided house, and there are always rigid family photos taken against a cloudy studio backdrop hanging on the wall, and you can never find the bathroom because you’re not used to a house so big—and when you get inside, your thick face paint is dripping down your neck and all three of your friends are nurses in low-cut white smocks. No one offers you a drink, so you make your own, and at the end of the night, Jeremiah Lewis puts his arm around your waist, and his hand brushes against the studs on the seat of your jeans, and he smells like vodka and Sprite when he whispers to you that he always thought clowns were kind of hot.

ShamWow

Your first summer job is a lifeguarding gig at your neighborhood pool, and your first paycheck goes to buying a crop top, bright pink and snug and off-the-shoulder, the kind everyone’s wearing with high-waisted shorts. In front of the mirror, admiring the shock of pink against denim and the way your hair falls over your bare shoulders, you think you look more grown-up now, like a girl who could drive or vote or be in college. You wear the outfit all weekend, pausing to enjoy it every time you pass your reflection in a store window, the glass door at the smoothie place, the side of your parents’ freshly washed car. The following morning at work, an elderly man complains that his lounge chair is wet and hands you his square shammy towel: Be a dear, he says, smiling, and help me wipe this up. Quickly, you flatten the chair, mop the water off the resin-coated wicker, and prop the chair back up, skimming it for extra droplets. When you’re done, the man tells you that he likes that suit you wear, the two-piece red one with the plus-sign on the chest.

Chia Pet

Ryan Daniels is in his first year of college, and it’s over winter break that he asks you out on a date, and of course you say yes because it’s your senior year of high school, and this is how you become somebody. He takes you to the Wendy’s drive-through and parks by the empty lake, so dark and so quiet you can’t believe there’s more city on the other side. You pinch your French fries daintily when you eat them, and you don’t dare dip them in ketchup, and everything feels like part of a movie, either romance or horror, you’re not quite sure. On the floor of the passenger’s side of Ryan’s car, you notice a tan-orange bust of Bob Ross, his green sprout-curls wilting away from his face; you love Bob Ross, you tell Ryan, giddy to make a connection on your mostly-quiet date. You say: you didn’t have much around the house growing up, but you always had paint. Ryan laughs and says he took the dumb thing from his lame little brother. Then he reclines your seat for you and stifles a French-fry burp before his weight covers yours. Wait, you say once, or maybe more than once, but he doesn’t hear you. The lights in the car click off.

Snuggie

In your first year of college, your roommate’s boyfriend makes fun of you when he realizes you have a sleeved blanket; it looks like a bathrobe, he gasps between laughs, or a tent. As the first semester passes, you spend most of your days curled up in it, in your lofted bed where you can always hear your neighbor’s alarm clock go off in the mornings. When your roommate asks if something is wrong, you tell her you’re just cold. But the more class you miss, the more you remember you’re wasting your loans, and the more you waste, the less you see the point of anything at all. One day, your roommate lets her boyfriend take a nap in the room while she goes to intramural soccer practice, and if everything didn’t feel so heavy, it would be hard to drift back to sleep with a near-stranger sprawled out under your roommate’s purple bedspread. It’s as if they’ve forgotten you’re in there, too, or they’ve decided it no longer matters. About an hour after you finally doze off again, a strange sound wakes you up, and you open your eyes to your roommate’s boyfriend holding a photo of something, the purple bedspread moving up and down along with his hand. You shut your eyes again and burrow your arms in your blanket sleeves and wait, your gut coiling. When he’s finished, your roommate’s boyfriend goes to the bathroom, and you open your eyes again. There’s a picture missing from your corkboard, the one of you and your cousin together at the lake the summer before.

OxiClean

Your therapist at the university health center asks if you’re happy, and you say yes. You tell her how your boyfriend took you out last night to your favorite restaurant with the spinach dip and steak frites. You tell her how he told you he loved you. Finally, you think, you’ve done enough for someone to love you. You don’t tell her that when you went back to your apartment, he did it again, the thing where he says he doesn’t expect sex but that it would be foolish for him to be in a relationship without it when there are so many girls who could give it to him. You don’t tell her that you lay there and hoped it would be quicker this time. You don’t tell her that when you got up afterward, you left a red stain behind, small and round like an egg. Your therapist raises her eyebrows, writes something down, says not to be afraid to share the whole story. You answer that you aren’t. When you get home, you pull the soiled sheets from the hamper and attack them with stain remover, scrubbing at the spot in the middle. This is the most energy you’ve had in weeks. You run the sheets through a rinse until the stain is gone, and looking at the newly clean fabric, you wonder how to tell what’s real. You’d know for sure, you decide, if you’d really been wronged.

Right?

COYOTES by Dan Crawley

August 6, 2019

I find myself fading under ballooning khakis, a parachuting buttoned-down shirt. I let myself in Big Sis’s place through an open sliding glass door. Last time, I found a bundle of twenties in a kitchen cabinet drawer, next to the stove. I ripped out most of the blue paper from a pad on the counter, keeping a few twenties on top of the rubber-banded roll. This time, a million paper clips and batteries like polished coins and plastic measuring spoons litter the bottom of the drawer. I could weep four ounces.

Then I hear another’s weeping and I see Big Bro letting himself in the front door, his crying toddler in tow. My nephew is held like a football on his father’s hip, most likely adding to his uproar. Big Bro stares at my damp forehead, chin, and wonders, “How do you have a key?” I tell him I got an extra the same time he did, a lie. He wonders also, “So what are you doing here?” I tell him I’m retrieving money Big Sis owes me, another lie. He tells me, “I brought over this screaming meemie because I’ve got somewhere to go…for…something, something, and Big Sis is babysitting. Where are you, Big Sis?” I tell him she is not home from work yet, and I’ve got somewhere to go with the money owed to me, for something, something. “My somewhere is more important than your somewhere,” he points out. I can’t help but point out Big Bro’s clammy expression, too. So he points out also, “My something, something is more urgent than whatever your something, something is.” I tell him to gaze upon my shrunken sack of skin, trapped at the bottom of a desolate gulch, and beg for a few bucks. Big Bro tells me, “Someone with a high-powered, corner-office set up like you should have a bank vault full of money for your something, something.” I beg for forty bucks, which could work. Then Big Bro remembers, “I left my truck running.” I tell Big Bro I’m incapable of watching his son as he performs a flawless hand-off of the screaming meemie to the futon on his way out. I pace in tight circles. My hair bristles.

My nephew thrashes all over the futon, his yowl a loose fan belt. So I start yowling a pitiful wheeze. Down in a dried-out creek bed, a thicket of cholla cacti hemming me in. I can’t stay on my feet any longer and collapse onto the edge of the futon and curl up. Big Sis won’t even know I’m here. Just a pile of clothes left by her boyfriend. My nephew stands like a boozer and clutches my billowing shirt and yowls into my ear. Next comes the pounding. Both of us go silent. We hear Big Sis’s uproar on the other side of the door, “I don’t know how you coyotes got in, but I’ve called animal control and the cops to get you out.” My nephew growls. Now that I can do.

NEW CORNERS by Alexondria Jolene

August 5, 2019

The ocean goes unseen. Water scares her, she chokes as she sips it.

She stays in her room while new people load in. It happens every few days. The room doesn’t have a window. The feeling of waves make her sick; she can’t stand to look at them in motion. A tiny pastel painting of a palm tree reminds her of one she saw in a doctor’s office as a child.

Coiled on her bed, the silence strains her ears until horns and fireworks make tiny explosions. They sound small. They sound far. She steps into the hallway for some boxed cranberry juice. Frozen rats fill the ice machine, their cold blood dripping onto the floor. “It’s not what you think,” a man whispers behind her.

Guests are brought to the bingo room just before dinner. She’s the only one who actively plays. No one else even cares to win. Hardly any of them move their pieces. They don’t finish.

In the dining hall, no one sits next to her. “You smell gross,” says an older man.

“Your hair looks like a moldy spider’s nest,” says another.

“I’m lovely,” she says to them.

As she stands in line for a tray of food, she realizes it’s not the buffet she imagined. Employees in tan uniforms hand her applesauce for dessert. She doesn’t like applesauce, but that’s all they serve her. It’s free, so she takes it, but she doesn’t like it.

The other guests get mad at the ones in uniforms. They throw their applesauce, dumping their meals onto the dull floor. She grabs another man’s cheesecake right off of his tray. “You don’t want this cheesecake with your motion sickness, do you, sir? Surely you can’t hold it down with these rough waters.” The man doesn’t respond; he’s slouched over in his chair, his emesis bucket tilted over on his lap.

A man in his late thirties, with hair not thinning at all, rushes down the hallway. His finger lacks a wedding ring. He wants me, she thinks.

***

An employee in a tan uniform removes her empty food tray and leads her into a small office. The man without a wedding ring tells her to undress. She screams. The employees in tan carry her to her room.

She sits on her bed, watching the pastel painting. The palm leaves sway. They fall to the ground, becoming waves. Confident in the patch behind her ear, she walks up the painting and removes it from the wall. Behind it, a porthole, waves crashing against it. She falls to the ground and begins to wretch. Thawing rats roll into her room.

“Your last pill, dear. It’s time for you to leave,” the man without a wedding ring tells her. He hands her a small blue pill. She notices his badge for the first time. The pill dissolves in her warm hand.

“I’ve been wanting to switch rooms for a while now,” she replies. “But please, nothing with a window. I’m scared of water. No paintings, either.”

“You’ve run out of financial assistance,” he says.

“I don’t want any more applesauce,” she says. “My daughter needs to come pick me up. There’s a rat problem. Let me call her.”

He looks at an employee in tan clothes. “I thought her chart said she has no kids?” he says.

“She doesn’t,” the employee replies.

The man without a ring bends down to the woman’s level. “You have no kids,” he says.

“When my daughter was seven, I told her to put me on a cruise instead of a nursing home,” she says. “But this isn’t the right cruise. I don’t like the paintings here.”

“This is a senior behavioral health unit at the community hospital. You have run out of government assistance. We have to discharge you. I hope you find somewhere to stay.”

***

The employee in tan walks the woman through a lobby she doesn’t remember seeing on the way in. A reflection in the mirrored wall stares at her. Small, wrinkled, dreadlocks to her breasts. Gross, she thinks. That woman is disgusting. The reflection dances alongside her until she reaches the sliding doors.

The employee in tan walks her outside and lets go of her hand.

“The corner of 68th and Havenway is mine,” says a lady sitting on the curb.

FRIDGE NOTE by Matt Boyarsky

July 31, 2019

Good morning, my little junkyard dog. Sleep okay?

I put on a fresh pot, and your old man is propped up sturdy in the recliner. I sprayed him with Febreeze to be safe. He’ll be fine. He’s not going anywhere. Please come watch the sunrise with me?

That spot — down at the reservoir, where we made love, where we rolled around in the lithium, and I thought I grew a third ear as I climbed out from the sludge a monster, and you asked me if I was scared, and I said, “shit yeah”— that’s where I’ll be. I didn’t put on any shoes before I left because I didn’t feel like it. I like when my heels are calloused and black. I’m prettiest then.

It’s not that cold, I don’t think. Could just be the shakes. But, should you happen to think of my SpongeBob slippers on your way out— assuming you come—I’d be so grateful. I might have changed my mind. But if not, no biggie.

Oh, and I borrowed your wig, too. Hope that’s okay. Don’t worry, though, it’s not your good one. I grabbed the purple bob with the cinnamon gum stuck in it instead. The one that makes me feel like midnight. The one that babbling bank teller said had “Uma Thurman vibes” when I stepped on the side of his head and you cleaned out the vault, laughing at how its walls ate the sound.

Be sure to lock up if you come. Your dad’s got a lot of bullets I’m sure a lot of others would like to borrow, too. And if you can stomach it, give him an extra kiss on the cheek from me. The social checks have been real lifesavers, and I’m not so sure I’ll ever be able to repay him before we meet on the other side. But we’ve been good this month. We’ve been careful. Enough. Let’s order the whole breakfast menu at Al’s Place. Maybe do a couple coffee enemas until we can feel our hair growing. Time to hit the goddamn road already.

They’re calling for clear skies. You should come see this.

With love,

The rhinestone cowboy

THE PIPES by E.M. Stormo

July 30, 2019

Mom doesn’t let me drink from the pipes. “Don’t be a dog,” she says, but I can’t help it. All I hear is “Be a dog.” On the outskirts of the city, there’s a pipe that flows all day long. You have to squat in a ditch to drink, but it’s worth it. At night, nobody bothers you. Giant women make neon eyes from the city, but that’s it. The pipe-water tastes fresh, although Mom says, “It’s probably sewage.” I hear her calling me home from miles away. My ears itch of worms, so she must be saying my name. There are more pipes on the way, but the one near the outskirts is the best. I stop at a few of them. My name grows louder. The syllables carry on the wind like small-breasted birds. When I get home, to what city-folk call a “hole in the wall,” Mom is waiting for me, door ajar with the smell of soggy spaghetti. She is about to say my name again when she sees me. Right away she inspects around my lips, under my nose, and the back of my teeth. “Where were you today, my little dog?” She already knows. I bow my head and groan confession, “At the pipes,” but it isn’t loud enough, so I cough out the last drops of pipe-water stored in my gums and shout “At the pipes!” She hears me this time. The entire neighborhood hears, all the neighbors in their holes. I was at the city pipes and my withered lips tell the tale. My mouth doesn’t deserve her spaghetti, but she fixes me a bowl anyway. I am not invited to the table but instead eat my dinner on my mattress in the corner of our room. “I love you,” she says between slurps, “even if you drink from pipes.” Drink from pipes. Mom secretly commands me to do it. Even with withered lips, she kisses me goodnight. The smell of pipe-water doesn’t stop her from cradling me to sleep. All I can smell is soggy spaghetti. When I stir in the small hours, she attempts to feed me water from a bottle, but I spit that out on the floor.

The next day I’m back at the pipes. There is a subtle soy flavor in the water. They must have had Chinese recently. City folks are always sending out for food. If they have spaghetti, it’s from a fancy Italian restaurant miles away. The further the distance the greater they value the food. You can see them walking along the road in shoes not much different than mine. Mom could’ve made these city shoes. They walk for miles to get food. But who am I to say? I walk for miles to drink from their pipes. I don’t eat Chinese or Italian. We both wear mom-shoes, so maybe we could be friends. If they drink from pipes, we definitely could be friends. After taking my fill, I wait for them behind the road cage. Not even dogs can disguise themselves as good as this. Mom begins to call my name softly. My earworm itches. The giant women make neon eyes. My name grows louder. The position is awkward, but I don’t have to wait long. A group of city friends eventually show up. They have oily bags of some food I can’t determine by smell alone. I jump out onto the road, but I don’t mean to scare them. I am a humble animal. Bowing my head as my rear goes up. Without words, I befriend them. I turn over to reveal my belly. The purest friendship. My mouth leaks pipe-water. They toss scraps to me. It’s Italian! One of them leans down and asks, “Are you lost, buddy?” I don’t answer, but nod unconsciously. They bring me into the city. There is a color there that wasn’t visible from the outskirts, a neon waveform that surrounds every home, all neatly stacked next to each other. Our holes in the wall are random as rats in comparison. Everything in the city is fully intentional. The giant women stand among us, careful not to step on anybody’s home. A fishnet leg, the size of my mattress, is close enough to touch, but my hand goes straight through. My new friends laugh at my confusion. I don’t understand their fancy city-colors. A girl shows me how to gyrate with the waveform. I try out a gyration, but they laugh at me. One of my friends owns a real dog, a long-haired mutt. He performs a better gyration than me. He also eats Italian. He is a city dog, more so than I’ll ever be. A good dog, he shows me the ropes. He leads and I follow. We head to the pipe at the heart of the city. He demonstrates a superior method for pipe-drinking. Most of the city favors neon, its homes and women, but this pipe is golden. The water that flows is also golden. He looks at me like How does it taste? It tastes golden, buddy. Once you get a taste of the city and a feel for its waveforms, it’s impossible to leave, no matter how loud my name, how itchy my worms. I spend the whole night in the neon dirt by the golden puddle.

Mom is asleep when I get home, or pretending to be. The spaghetti was left out overnight. I wouldn’t call it Chinese or Italian. I’m not hungry either way. I drank too much. I’ll eat some in the morning for her amusement. From her bed, she moans, “Goodnight, my big city dog.” Her voice is sore from calling my name through the night. I don’t answer her because I don’t want her to smell my mouth, but she knows where I was. I am a big city dog now.

KIWI by Lee Matalone

July 28, 2019

You need to put the diaper on the other way, stupid, your brother lectures you, as if you hadn’t practically changed his diaper growing up, such a hot mess, from day one. Though you are twins, Jade wasn’t truly potty trained until years after you, pissing in his bedsheets till he was four, five years old. You two aren’t all that similar, as a matter of fact. As a baby he never cried, he didn’t speak really until he was six or seven and even then words were spare. For Mama his cough was a gift from God.

You on the other hand, you’re a talker. You’re a girl that speaks your damn mind. Like, when he’s standing there, hovering behind you at the kitchen counter, your hands smelling like shit and goddamnit will you hand me a wipe and every time he shifts his weight he makes a shhh shhh sound and it’s driving you straight insane. The pockets of his cargo shorts are filled with change. Soon he’s going to the Kroger to cash it all out and he swears there may be twenty bucks worth in there. All morning he’s flipping couch cushions and floor mats in the car and digging in all your dress pockets, you only wear dresses with pockets because we girls have to suffer different than boys and goddamnit I want pockets just like boys. Your Aunt Valentine is helping you with groceries and baby stuff, so much damn baby stuff who knew babies needed so much stuff, but she already pushes her food stamps to the limit feeding your two hungry mouths and you think come on she’s gotta party too and you are fifteen years old, old enough to get a job pushing carts in the Walmart parking lot or scrubbing dishes in the back of O’Charleys. You know you can handle this. You know sure well you are both old enough to contribute to this family and your brother he’s going to go out and get a job, he says, right after he gets that cash.

When you turn around to grab the wipe you look at Jade for a long hard minute and sometimes it really is like looking in the mirror and sometimes it is like looking at a stranger or at least like looking in one of those carnival mirrors that make your body wiggly and long, slightly off and funnier looking but it’s still you. You are twins but not the kind that look alike but you look alike enough but he, Baby Reed, he doesn’t look like either of you. He’s like he was brought in by the postman, but he wasn’t, he was made right in this house, right here by this family.

You give your brother a look that says, this is a real messy one and your brother gives you a look back that says, I wiped his ass last time, Camryn. You two communicate this way, in unspokens, much more than actual talking. Like you said you like to talk, but you don’t even have to with Jade you’re just what they call on the same wavelength, like two colors of just a slightly different shade of blue. Or green. Jade’s favorite color is green. So everything for your baby is this awful shade of lime green that looks just like...You even stole some paint from the Walmart in that awful shade of lime green and one night Jade went out and got a Hot-n-Ready and you two and Aunt Valentine put on your holiest tees and started painting Reed’s room and though you hated that color by the time it was up on the walls you said well, this actually is kind of nice it reminds me of a fresh bite of kiwi, a fruit you only had once but you now considered your favorite fruit. You tried it when another classmate with shiny white ass sneakers in the sixth grade brought it in and she told you Yeah, you bite the furry stuff and you took a bite out of that itchy scratchy layer of green hairs and even with that, even after the girls at the table started laughing at you you thought this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted and when you look at the wall you think of that fruit and you smile inside your belly and inside your heart.

No one knows the truth about Reed except you and your brother, not even Aunt Valentine. When your belly started getting bigger you told her you were simply eating a lot of sugary cereals and frozen corndogs and when you got even bigger you said it must have been immaculate convention, you mean conception and she slapped you across your face so hard you hit the carpet and got a rug burn on your cheek (Don’t exaggerate, she later said, I was just waking your ass into motherhood.). When you got back up she was sitting on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, all calm with a TV remote in her hand, and she said this baby’s gonna be the healthiest, happiest baby in all of Deridder, as if she was making a promise not to bring anymore unhappiness into this house, into this family, as if she were saying your baby would be different than the other babies in town born to girls just like you with breasts barely perky enough to salute a one-star general, the girls without fathers or mothers or neither with babies made from immaculate convention, you got one in the oven and this muffin’s gonna be a beautiful little treat. Valentine could have said a whole bunch of mean things like hey be glad your mama OD’ed when you were three but she didn’t and she didn’t quite ask where the baby came from either she just said this muffin’s gonna be a beautiful little treat and that made you feel so good for maybe the first time in your life, even better, even better than when you had that first and only bite of kiwi.

You are wiping and wiping and your baby’s bottom is so squeaky clean you could probably kiss his toosh and your teeth would get brighter, and your brother he snickers and he goes up and plants a kiss right on your baby’s ass saying he hadn’t had a dentist appointment since he was maybe six years old and hey he needed a shine.

You love Jade with all of your heart and you know he didn’t mean anything by it he needed the loving. Like every night when it got dark and the TV in the family room went quiet he’d crawl into bed with you and hug you tight, and about half those nights he’d cry hard and soft into your hair. Those nights you’d rock him to sleep, going hey, hey hey you’re a monkee, a song you remember from somewhere in the youth that you never quite had, maybe in an aisle in the Kroger when your Mama had you two buckled up side by side in the buggie, the loudspeaker telling you you were a monkey, a fun little good time creature swinging from some tropical trees in a faraway land, or sometimes you’d sing swing low, sweet chariot, and you knew a chariot was a magical word that meant something that would take you a place other than here, and that comforted him into such a special place, a place so different than here, a place where kiwis grow on every tree and loose change flows in the rivers and beautiful babies are born with rumps as sweet and soft as muffins you went there together.